If you like what you’re reading then you will like my 2015 Fantasy Baseball Guide! Last year’s fantasy guide was more than 150,000 words and had 440 player profiles (of hitters and pitchers). My approach to player evaluation is to ask questions about what the player has done in the past and what he may do in the future. I certainly provide a narrative on how I feel a player will perform, but I also ask a lot of open ended questions that I hope will get you thinking about the information I’ve provided.
From 2011-12 Evan Longoria missed substantial amount of time with tissue injuries (oblique strain and hamstring strain), but in the past two seasons he’s played 322 games and appears has found a way to stay healthy. Even though he played every game last year he didn’t really do a whole lot especially in regards to the power.
The image below shows his fly ball batting average and ISO since 2008.
Obviously ISO is dependent upon batting average so if the batting average is low so will the ISO. That said, the trend does not look good. When a players power drops off the next thing I look at is the extra base hit percentage. The table below shows his extra base hit percentage and like the previous image the trend does not look good.
| Year | XBH | XBH% |
| 2008 | 60 | .492 |
| 2009 | 77 | .470 |
| 2010 | 73 | .432 |
| 2011 | 58 | .492 |
| 2012 | 31 | .392 |
| 2013 | 74 | .448 |
| 2014 | 49 | .310 |
Not only did the home run power drop off significantly, so did the doubles and triples. The reason why he didn’t hit a lot of extra base hits was due to the poor performance on fly balls (table below).
| Year | AVG | OPS | XBH |
| 2008 | .370 | 1.599 | 37 |
| 2009 | .351 | 1.383 | 47 |
| 2010 | .313 | 1.209 | 42 |
| 2011 | .318 | 1.352 | 37 |
| 2012 | .370 | 1.421 | 55 |
| 2013 | .242 | .955 | 31 |
It looks like he had some bad luck and there should be some positive regression in the batting average and extra base hits, but last year his ground ball rate was the highest its been since 2009. He’s going to play all of 2105 at the age of 29 so there is hope the power positively regresses, but the trend doesn’t look good. Either way, I don’t believe he hits more than 29 home runs next year.
In regards to his batting average, it should positively regress, but not as much as you think. If he’s making less hard contact it’s going to be more difficult for the .285 BABIP to positively regress significantly (because batting average is dependent on either making hard contact, being fast or being lucky).
I project 575 ABs with a .267 AVG, 22 HRs, 90 RBI, 77 R and 2 SBs.
